Launch of OERRH Survey Data Explorer #oeglobal

Launch of OERRH Survey Data Explorer #oeglobal

The OER Research Hub team are at OE Global in Banff, Canada this week, and it seems like a great opportunity to launch the prototype tool we have developed to help people navigate some of our open results. We’ve been working on developing a tool that would help us to exploit our data set in this way for some time. The tool allows live exploration of more than 7,000 surveys results covering most countries around the world. Just for the purposes of illustration, here is the coverage we have in the North American continent.

OERRH Survey Responses, North America (2013-2014)

You can access the Survey Data Explorer on the OER Impact Map site, where it sits alongside the other tools we have developed for curating and mapping evidence around OER impact.

Here are the question areas you can explore in the present iteration:

Learning and teaching profiles

In which subjects do you normally use OER?

In which ways have you accessed the internet in the past three months?

What are your main reasons for OER?

OER Behaviours

In which (of the following) ways have you used OER?

Which (of the following) types of OER have you used?

For which (of the following) purposes have you used OER in your teaching?

Which (of the following) OER repositories have you used?

Which (if any) of the following factors would make you more likely to select a particular resource when searching for educational content?

Challenges and Solutions

Which challenges (if any) do you face when using OER?

Which (if any) of these techniques do you use to support your use of OER?

OER Impact

To what extent do you agree with the following statements about the impact on your teaching of using OER?

Based on your experience as a teacher, to what extent do you agree with the following statements?

In which of these ways, if any, has your use of OER made an impact on your formal studies?

As a result of using OER, are you more or less likely to engage in any of the following behaviours?

When using OER, which features do you feel motivate you in your studies

Results can be further refined using the filters on the left side of the tool, meaning that results can be displayed according to role (educator, formal learner, informal learner, etc.), age, gender, educational level, disability, sector, and so on. You can add as many filters as you like but only one question can be displayed at one time. But you can generate tables and graphs on the fly. They look like this:

Types of OER Used (full sample)

Impact of OER use on future behaviour (full sample)

The full dataset is also available for download from the site as a Google Fusion table or a good old CSV file.

This is very much an experimental tool for us and we welcome feedback on how useful people find it. Also, do let us know if you find bugs or see something weird! We’re also interested in ideas you might have for new features or questions we might ask in the future.

Since this is the prototype, should you want to cite data from the open data set, it’s probably best to get in touch with the project so we can verify it and make sure it is up to date.